


all creatures great and small

by Forlorn Kumquat (sara_wolfe)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Veterinarians, M/M, WinterIron Reverse Bang
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-01-01
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-10-02 01:00:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17254667
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sara_wolfe/pseuds/Forlorn%20Kumquat
Summary: After rescuing a tiny, abandoned kitten from the rain, Tony makes an impulsive decision to drop out of MIT and become a veterinarian.





	all creatures great and small

**Author's Note:**

> This was written for the WinterIron Reverse Bang. I had a lot of fun working with artist, **feigned sobriquet**. See the beautiful art [here on Tumblr](http://feignedsobriquet.tumblr.com/post/181613683835)

Tony hadn’t slept in three days. 

Not that this was anything new; he couldn’t count the number of all-nighters he’d pulled since he’d started college. And honestly, at this point, he’d replaced so much of his blood with caffeine that most of the time he did just fine without sleep. But this time was different. 

Before, he’d always had Rhodey there to drag him off to bed whenever his waking streak was starting to reach new highs. But now, Rhodey was off at the Air Force Academy, and there was no one else who cared enough to make sure that he slept. And when he was lost in his work, he had a tendency to forget that he even needed to sleep. So he didn’t. And then, when he went long enough, he couldn’t. 

And that led to his current situation - wandering around campus in the rain, trying to burn off enough energy that maybe when he went back to his dorm, he’d just collapse from sheer exhaustion. 

Tony didn’t see the garbage bag until he stumbled over it and it screamed at him. Freezing in the middle of the walkway, Tony slowly crouched down and poked cautiously at the plastic bag. It wiggled under his hand before letting out another indignant shriek. 

He fumbled at the knot at the top of the bag, but it was tied too tightly to come undone. So he dug his fingers into the thin plastic, ripping a hole into the side. The bag abruptly stopped moving, everything going still for a couple of tense seconds, and then a tiny, orange head popped out of the hole in the bag to stare up at him. The sight startled Tony enough that he fell backwards onto his butt, landing in a puddle with a splash that soaked him head to toe. 

Clambering awkwardly out of the bag, the kitten screamed at him again, high-pitched cry audible even over the sound of the rain on the pavement. The kitten toddled toward him with a sort of lurching gait, and as it got closer, Tony could see why - the kitten was missing half of a back leg. 

“Is that why someone threw you away?” Tony asked, quietly, as the kitten determinedly dug its claws into his jean-clad leg and climbed up into his lap. “Because you’re broken?” He could relate all too well - he’d spent most of his childhood in and out of hospitals for a congenital heart defect, watching his parents become more and more distant from their broken disappointment of a son. 

Tony reached out and carefully scooped the kitten up, wincing only a little bit when tiny, razor-sharp claws dug into the palms of his hands. He tucked the kitten inside his sweatshirt, pulling the hood over his head as he stood up. 

“You’re coming home with me,” he told the kitten. The kitten purred loudly in agreement, making Tony smile. “We’ll be broken together,” he said, as he started back to his dorm.

* * *

Back in his dorm room, Tony carefully extricated the kitten from the inside of his sweatshirt. It wasn’t easy, with the way the kitten had dug its claws into the soft fabric, but Tony slowly unhooked each tiny claw and placed him in the middle of his bed. Then, he stripped out of his wet clothes, tossing them in the direction of the hamper in the corner. They landed short, but he was too tired to bother; he’d pick everything up in the morning. 

“Gotta get you warm and dry, too,” he told the kitten, as he pulled on a clean pair of sweats. “Can’t have you catching a cold and sneezing; if the RA finds out I’ve snuck you in here, we’ll both be out of a place to live.”

Grabbing a towel from the bathroom, Tony flopped down on the bed beside the kitten, letting it climb up on his chest. As the kitten sprawled out on his chest, Tony draped the towel over its back and head, gently rubbing until the orange fur was sticking up in tufts all over its body. 

“There,” Tony declared, dropping the towel beside him on the bed, “That’s one problem out of the way. Now I just have to figure out all the other bits and pieces, like food, and a litter box, and toys, and what else does a cat need?”

His train of thought was interrupted by the sound of his cell phone ringing. Rolling over onto his stomach, Tony grabbed the phone off his nightstand, Rhodey’s name flashing on the screen. 

“Platypus!” Tony crowed, happily, answering the phone. “Don’t tell me you need me to post bail, already?”

The sound of Rhodey’s laughter was the most beautiful thing Tony had heard in three days. “Nah,” Rhodey reassured him. “I’m just up late and bored out of my mind-” He paused, thoughtfully. “Wait a minute, what are you doing up this late?” 

“Why are you lecturing me on my sleeping habits when you just admitted to doing the same thing?” Tony asked, with a laugh. 

“Because you’re two hours ahead, which means your late is worse than my late,” Rhodey reminded him. “C’mon, Tones, spill.”

“I just couldn’t sleep.” Tony tried to brush his insomnia off, but from the sharp-eyed glare he was giving, Rhodey wasn’t buying it. Tony finally relented after a couple of seconds. “I haven’t been sleeping well lately, so I went for a walk.”

“How long is lately?” Rhodey asked, confused. “You were sleeping just fine when I left-” Realization hit, and he shot Tony a rueful look. “Tones-”

“Yeah, yeah,” Tony interrupted him, trying to make a joke out of it. “Poor Tony Stark, he’s so pathetic he can’t sleep without his best friend there to act like a security blanket.”

“Stop it,” Rhodey scolded him. “That’s Howard talking, and you know it.”

“I did find a new security blanket, though,” Tony said, hastily, before Rhodey could go too far down the all-too-accurate path of Tony’s issues with his father. “I made a friend on my walk.”

“At two in the morning?” Rhodey asked. “Tones, who else is running around campus at two in the morning?”

“Hang on, let me show you,” Tony told him. Fiddling with his phone for a minute, he activated the video-calling program he and Rhodey had coded into their phones a few months ago. “Got the video on your end going?”

“Just a sec,” came the reply, and then Rhodey’s face appeared on the screen a few moments later. “Okay, what’d you want to show me?”

“Rhodey, meet my new best friend,” Tony said, as he pointed his phone at the kitten. The kitten meowed at him, scooting forward to bat curiously at the screen. “Kitten, this is your Uncle Rhodey.”

Rhodey let out a high-pitched squeal that Tony was very generously not going to hold over him for the rest of their lives. “Tony, he’s adorable - wait, is it a he?”

“I don’t know,” Tony said, and he gently rolled the kitten on its back to check. “Yup, it’s a boy,” he told Rhodey, over the kitten’s indignant yelling. 

Rhodey burst out laughing as the kitten shot Tony an utterly offended look, stalking away from him as fast as his legs could carry him. “I think you made him upset.”

“Story of my life,” Tony said, with a chuckle. “Hey, so how’s the Academy? Tell me everything.”

“We start every morning with a five-mile run,” Rhodey told him, and Tony groaned, theatrically. “Yeah, you’d hate it,” Rhodey replied, with a laugh. 

“I don’t hate running,” Tony corrected him. He and Rhodey had gone running often enough at MIT for Rhodey to know that. “I just hate running while someone is yelling at me that I’m not doing it right. I get enough of that from my father.”

“After the run is breakfast,” Rhodey went on. “And then classes, and more classes, and - what is that cat doing?”

Tony looked behind him in time to see the kitten rolling over and somehow tangling himself in the towel Tony had used to dry him off with. The kitten squeaked in outrage as the towel completely covered his head, blinding him, and Tony laughed as he reached out and gently freed the kitten from his cottony prison. 

“Stay away from that,” Tony told the kitten, who bit his fingers with tiny, surprisingly-sharp teeth. Turning his attention back to Rhodey, he added, “Remind me to buy the little guy some toys so he doesn’t get bored while I’m gone at class.”

“Dude, he’s already bored when you’re sitting in the same room as him,” Rhodey replied, and Tony looked around to see the kitten already working to get himself tangled in the towel again. “Tones, I don’t know how to tell you this, but I think your new best friend is a bit of a dummy.”

From inside the towel came another indignant yell, this one loud enough that Tony was afraid his neighbors would hear. 

“All right, all right, calm down,” Tony told the kitten. He untangled the kitten yet again, this time getting needle-sharp claws sunk into his hand in return. “Ow!”

“You okay?” Rhodey asked, and Tony nodded, sucking on the side of his hand to try and ease the sting. “Hey, little dummy, don’t hurt your dad like that.”

“Don’t call him that,” Tony scolded, as he picked the kitten up. “He’s gonna start thinking that’s his name.”

A devious grin split Rhodey’s face. “Oh, Dummy,” he said, in a sing-song voice, and in Tony’s hands, the kitten perked up to stare at the phone screen. 

“Noooo,” Tony groaned, as Rhodey cackled with laughter. 

“Too late,” he said, triumphantly. “Kitten, I hereby dub thee Dummy.”

* * *

_Three months later:_

Tony stepped off the jet bridge, hitching Dummy’s carrier higher on his shoulder as he headed for the baggage claim. He hadn’t brought much back with him for the holiday break, but taking Dummy with him as his carry-on meant that he’d had to check his small duffle bag. 

The baggage claim wasn’t nearly as crowded as it could have been, something Tony was immensely grateful for. He grabbed his bag and headed for the pick up/drop off area, where a driver was supposed to be waiting to pick him up. At least, that’s what Tony thought his father had said; Howard had been so distracted on the phone, Tony wasn’t entirely sure his father even knew he was actually coming home for the holidays. 

But, not only was there a company car in the pick up zone, but Obie was leaning against the passenger side door, arguing with a security guard with a stormy look on his face. 

“-cannot park there for longer than five minutes!” the guard was insisting, and Tony hurried forward before the situation could get even more out of control. 

“Obie, are you causing trouble again?” he called out, drawing Obie’s attention away from the poor security guard who was just trying to do his job. 

“Always,” Obie replied, a big grin splitting his face. “Tony, my boy, how are you?”

“Happy to be home,” Tony told him, getting into the car as Obie pulled the door open for him. 

Sliding in beside Tony, Obie motioned for the driver to get the car moving. “How was school?” Obie asked. “Anyone special in your life?”

As if he’d been waiting for his cue, Dummy let out a loud, demanding cry, and Tony almost burst out laughing at the shocked expression on Obie’s face. 

“As a matter of fact…”

* * *

“WHAT DO YOU MEAN YOU’RE DROPPING OUT OF COLLEGE!?”

Dummy clawed at Tony’s arms as Howard roared, leaping to the floor and sprinting up the stairs. Tony resisted the urge to turn and watch the kitten go, envying Dummy the ability to quickly escape the tense scene. 

“I’m not dropping out of college,” he tried to explain, to a red-faced, fuming Howard. “I’m just changing my major. I’m going to be a veterinarian.”

“A veterinarian!” Howard raged, ignoring Tony to turn and scream at Maria, like it was somehow her fault. “He’s supposed to inherit the company someday, and instead he wants to play nursemaid to a bunch of fucking animals!”

Tony listened to his father rant for a few more seconds before deciding that he was done. Howard could rant and rave all he wanted, but he didn’t have to sit there and take it. Instead, he turned and went upstairs.

“Dummy?” he called out, softly, as he got to the top of the stairs, clicking his tongue to try and call the kitten out of hiding. “Where’d you go, buddy? C’mon out, it’s okay.”

A few more clicks, and then a tiny head poked out of a doorway down the hall. Seeing Tony, Dummy ran toward him as fast as his legs could carry him, sinking his claws into Tony’s jean-clad leg and climbing up as soon as he was close enough. Once in Tony’s arms, Dummy headbutted him in the chin, squalling an angry demand for attention. 

“I’m sorry,” Tony said, rubbing Dummy’s ears in the space he loved best. “If I’d known he was going to be like that, we would have just gone to see Rhodey’s family for Christmas.”

Dummy purred at him, which Tony told himself was Dummy accepting his apology, and not just being deliriously happy with the attention he was getting. 

“Let’s go down to the lab for a while,” Tony went on, as he headed for the back staircase to avoid running into his father again. “I want to start working on your new leg, and maybe if I leave Howard alone long enough, he’ll calm down and stop yelling for a few minutes.”

Down in his lab, Tony turned on his music, grabbed a pad of drafting paper, and immediately got down to work. While he sketched, and erased, and re-sketched designs for Dummy’s new leg, the kitten zoomed excited around the room. Dummy squeezed into every corner, and climbed on every elevated surface, and got into everything he possibly could before coming to a stop at Tony’s feet and demanding loudly to be picked up. Laughing, Tony scooped Dummy up and put him on the table, where he promptly curled into a ball and fell asleep. 

Diving back into his work, Tony wasn’t sure how much time had passed before his music suddenly and unexpectedly shut off. The room suddenly plunging into silence was enough to make his head spin. Looking up from the table, he saw his father standing in the doorway holding the duffle bag he hadn’t bothered to unpack yet. A cold knot of fear formed in the pit of his stomach. 

Howard stared at him in silence for a few seconds, steely gaze boring into Tony. Then he threw the duffel bag at Tony, who scrambled off his stool to catch the bag before it hit the ground. 

“The car is waiting upstairs to take you back to the airport,” Howard told him. “Your tuition at MIT has already been paid through the rest of the school year; I can’t change that. But you’ve been cut off from the rest of my money. If you insist on going through with this veterinarian farce, I’m not going to waste my time or money on you, anymore.”

“My ticket back isn’t for another two weeks,” Tony protested.

“I don’t care,” Howard replied, turning on his heel and walking away from the lab. “If you’re going to ruin your life, you’re not going to do it while you’re living in my house.”

Tony stared after his retreating back in stunned silence for a few seconds. Then, he slowly, carefully lifted Dummy off the table and cradled him close, letting the kitten’s sleepy purring reverberate through his chest for a few moments, pretending at a sense of peace he didn’t really feel.

“Guess we’re headed back to school,” he said, heading upstairs to his room. 

Grabbing Dummy’s carrier from the end of the bed, he put the kitten inside, to the sound of indignant yowls. He found a large suitcase in the back of his closet, and he started emptying his bookshelf of his most irreplaceable books. He grabbed a few more pieces of clothing he didn’t want to leave behind, and then he grabbed Dummy’s carrier and the suitcase and went back down to his lab. 

It hadn’t occurred to Howard, yet, to try and find a way to lock him out of the basement, but Tony didn’t want to risk his father’s temper by lingering more than necessary. He filled the rest of the suitcase with his computer, his notes, his sketches, everything he didn’t want falling into someone else’s hands. Especially since it didn’t look like he’d be coming back for a while. Or ever. 

Back upstairs, he took one last look around the house he’d spent far too little of his childhood in. The foyer was empty; neither of his parents had even bothered to come say goodbye to him. Not that Tony had expected such sentimentality from Howard, but he thought at least his mother... 

It felt just like he was seven years old again, with Jarvis waiting to drive him to boarding school while his parents had skipped out to god knows where to avoid the son they were shipping off because he was too much of an inconvenience to have around. Only this time, he didn’t even have Jarvis on his side. Not Obie, either, from the look of things. 

Stepping outside, Tony let the door slam behind him in one last, petty act of defiance. As promised, a car and driver were waiting for him in the driveway, the driver jumping out of his seat and running around quickly to pull the door open for Tony. 

“Mr. Stark said you were going to the airport?” the man asked, as he took Tony’s bags and loaded them in the back. 

Tony debated briefly telling him to drive him to Rhodey’s house. Fuck Howard and his edicts, see how he liked being deprived of a driver while Tony was getting a ride all the way to Philadelphia, to spend Christmas with people who were actually going to enjoy having him around. But he just as quickly dismissed the thought; he didn’t want to be responsible for the driver losing his job once he got back to New York. 

“Yeah, to the airport,” he confirmed, as he got in the car and pulled the door shut. 

The drive to the airport passed in almost complete silence; the driver tried to make conversation, but Tony just couldn’t make himself engage in small talk. At the airport, he thanked the driver and pulled his bags out of the car as quickly as he could. The sooner he could get on a plane and get out of New York, the better. 

The line at the customer service desk was horrendous, but Tony hadn’t really expected anything different. Not this time of the year. It took him almost an hour to reach the desk, and by then, he was tired, he was hungry, and he had a migraine pounding at his temples. 

“I’d like to change my ticket, please,” he said, handing the desk clerk the printout with details of his return ticket. “To Philadelphia.” And wouldn’t Rhodey be surprised as hell when Tony showed up on his doorstep?

“Same departure date?” the clerk asked, as she typed something on her computer. 

“Today, please,” Tony replied. 

The clerk was silent for a few moments while she looked something up. “With the penalty fee and the difference in air fare,” she finally said, “you’re looking at another six hundred and fifty bucks.”

Tony sucked in a sharp breath. That was a lot of money he didn’t have, especially right now. He had a personal account that his father didn’t know about, but he’d used the money for expenses at school he hadn’t wanted his parents to find out about, and he only had a couple hundred left. And he wasn’t about to call Rhodey and ask; not for that much money. 

“What if I don’t change the destination?” he asked. “What if I just change the date on my original ticket?” It wouldn’t be fun hanging around an empty campus for two weeks by himself, but it certainly beat any other options he was looking at right now. 

The clerk worked at her computer for another minute, and then frowned. “I’m sorry, sir. That only knocks the total down to five hundred.”

That wasn’t - that wasn’t any better. “Thank you,” Tony said, quietly, taking his confirmation printout back from the clerk. “I think I’ll just keep my ticket like it is.”

Grabbing his bags and Dummy’s carrier, Tony wandered away from the customer service desk in a daze. He couldn’t afford to go to Rhodey’s for the rest of the break, couldn’t afford to go back to school. And he sure as hell couldn’t go back home. 

What was he supposed to do now?

Making his way over to the nearest window, Tony sank down into a chair and stared out at the planes on the runway. Needing the comfort, he unzipped Dummy’s carrier enough to reach a hand in and pet the sleeping kitten. Dummy woke up enough to purr softly at him, licking his hand. 

“What are we gonna do now, bud?” he asked, quietly.


End file.
